Thursday, 16 August 2007

So where did I come from?

Every so often I go around trying to figure out if there's any 'cause' to my kink. Mostly in the idle curiosity sense, rather than in the Examine Your Desires, Hoor! sense.

And you know something? I got almost nuffin'.

I originally wrote out a long paragraph about background information, early childhood stuff, but really, I got nothing. The closest I've got to an explanation for anything is that my experience with a parent who I believe has Borderline Personality Disorder as primary caregiver has left me with a really intense craving for stability and security which may contribute to the sort of structured relationship that really hits my kink buttons. (But on the other hand, I can get that sort of stability and security without the structure of d/s. Which brings me back to "I got nuffin'".)

I mean, I can make just-so stories out of it: "Oh, my experience with a somewhat distant nurturing father through childhood makes me attracted to a man who can provide that sort of nurturing support without the distance". But I'm well aware that if, say, my father had been the dominating power in the household, the just-so would be, "Oh, my experience with male power and strength means I conceive of male attractiveness in terms of domination." Anything can be used to "explain" this stuff, like half-constructed memories justifying Satanic Panic. Anything can be stretched and twisted to come up with a reason, and I don't really see any way to judge that as anything other than an interesting creative exercise, since I can use the same factoids to "prove" a half-dozen mutually contradictory realities.

My first romantic fantasies, back before I had any sort of concept of it, had me as the actor, the one seeking the favor of the Desired One. Fairy tale structures in which I had to rescue the handsome prince trapped in the tower, that kind of thing. (It never occurred to me that the standard gendering structure of fairy tales meant I should be the one trapped in the tower.) By the time I got old enough to start thinking sexually and imagining sex, the fantasies were all -- every one of them -- serious d/s. Into the realms of sex slavery, some serious objectification, that end of things.

And I was wracked with guilt by them, when I thought about them consciously, because of the whole Women Should Be Equal, We're Fighting For Equality culture in which I was raised. Wracked with guilt when I thought about them, and would still wrap my legs tight around a pillow when I was going to sleep and speculate about how to transport those sex slaves, what the conditions in the slave harems were like, what that illicit genuine love affair between the master and the slave-who-was-my-POV felt like.

A couple of years after I started having those fantasies, I had my first experiences with sexism. (Harassment, justified with "boys will be boys".) After that was the assault -- which, as I wrote over at my place a while ago, killed my ability to fantasise at all for a number of years and completely changed the structure of my sex fantasies (from speculation to pastiche).

I don't know where it came from. I know I was given a copy of Tigana one year (I was probably twelve, given the release date), and read the bit with the guy tied spreadeagle to the four-posted bed over and over again because it was hot. Furtively in my own room, because juvenile sexuality is such a scary thing to be caught at. That's the only image from the outside world that ever caught me like that, put me in an 'I want to do that', these two hungry switchy people let loose from their mental cages with each other.

It's not clearly modelled on either my family as a child or an inversion thereof. It predates the assault, and probably some of the earlier clear threads exist in the same timeframe as the harassment, but in my head they feel like separate worlds, the waking one with its guilt and shame and then the coiled up going to sleep with my mind in a horrifying world that was, nonetheless, irresistably sexy. The cultural pressures I was aware of kept it from being something that was entirely safe to imagine in the cold, unforgivingly harsh light of day rather than the safe embrace of the darkness.

The monsters in the dark always seemed more like me -- and liked me more -- than the ones in the day, I guess.

6 comments:

I talked about my own just so storying at my own spot in a comment here:

http://trinityva.livejournal.com/693533.html?thread=3763485#t3763485

*nod* And I don't [know where my fantasies came from, in response to someone who said she clearly did.] I do deeply suspect that about a couple things (I'd be surprised if I had quite the blade fetish I have now if I hadn't been operated on ever) but not everything.

I can think of a bunch of things that could -- could -- explain my dominance. My family having a long line of opinionated and brash women (would that make me dominant by genes I got from them, or by cultural expectation within the family? Right there I don't know already!) My disability making me more helpless than others, and me chafing under it. Me being smart and able to challenge adults even as a wee tot. Being an only child able to fairly easily influence my parents. On and on.

But I don't have any sort of deeply convinced feeling: that was it for me.

Even my yen for blades and blood: okay, would make sense if surgery has something to do with it. But I remember being especially afraid of blood quite young -- maybe it just always elicited intense emotion from me and that would've crystallized into a fetish (hey, scary, therefore hot to think of playing with) anyway.

And I knew pain was hot to me in the abstract from VERY young. I had my first surgery very young so OK, maybe explanation -- but if so, then why did I never THINK of that connection at all until years later?

I'm not doubting that some people know the precise roots of a fetish or a fantasy. I'm sure some do. But I'm equally sure some don't, and I'm leery of the idea that if we hunt hard enough it'll become obvious in every case. Or even most.

Honestly, a lot of the attempts to do the, "Oh, that happened to you, that clearly means this about your sexuality" stuff really do strike me as the stuff around false memories.

Growing up with a Borderline, I know the intensity of story, the retelling things in contrafactuals until reality and memory get overwritten. It makes me really wary about the attempts to force an explanation out of scatterings of facts which only are maybe relevant at all. I'm way, way too vulnerable in my memory to open it up to other people's stories about me.

Dw3t:"Honestly, a lot of the attempts to do the, "Oh, that happened to you, that clearly means this about your sexuality" stuff really do strike me as the stuff around false memories.

Growing up with a Borderline, I know the intensity of story, the retelling things in contrafactuals until reality and memory get overwritten. It makes me really wary about the attempts to force an explanation out of scatterings of facts which only are maybe relevant at all. I'm way, way too vulnerable in my memory to open it up to other people's stories about me. "

That's really really interesting. I'm big on rationality and skepticism, and find false memories fascinating (both from a neuroscience kind of place and a sociological kind of place). I never thought about it in connection with this "examine your desires" thing. Interesting... Thanks for the food for thought!

I'm quite positive that if I worked at it, I could convince myself that my kink is the product of a variety of tenuously connected factors in my background, something I can offer up as The Answer to the whole "Why are you like you are?" question.

I'm also quite positive that I could do that no matter what background I actually had, or which tenuously connected factors I chose to base the notion on. It's like a characterisation exercise: take these three factoids and generate a consistent character who happens to be trait.

By the timeBuy GW2 Gold I got old enough to start thinking sexually and imagining sex, the fantasies were all -- every one of them -- serious d/s. Into the realms of sexDiablo III Gold slavery, some serious objectification, that end of things.